No Banzai Burger, but IronPigs baseball game is great fun

TOWN SQUARE

Fans have fun with more than just baseball during IronPigs games at Coca-Cola… (MONICA CABRERA, MORNING…)

June 19, 2012|Paul Carpenter

It now has been nine long days since surfer dudes won the Stanley Cup, and it still does not seem real. What's next? Somebody riding a cow wins the Kentucky Derby? Pee-wee Herman becomes heavyweight boxing champion?

The triumph by the Los Angeles Kings sent all those living in proper ice hockey regions (where it snows sometimes) into an emotional tailspin. The only consolation is that they did it with four former Philadelphia Flyers, including my favorite, Jeff Carter, who had a team-leading hat trick and five other goals in the playoffs.

Also helping the City of Angels beat the State of Devils was Simon Gagne, who makes my wife's heart go pitter-patter, along with former Flyers captain Mike Richards and winger Justin Williams.

It's enough to send a person right over the edge, which is what happened to me over the weekend, when I decided to go to a (gulp) baseball game. (Those who have read my previous comments about baseball should now get up off the floor.)

After a little more than four years of ignoring the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, a spectator sport vacuum pulled me into Coca-Cola Park like a feather in a vortex. I was lucky to get a sit-down ticket; it was a standing-room-only crowd for the IronPigs game against the real-life Durham Bulls.

The visit by that team was irresistible. I may prefer ice hockey to baseball, but there is only one good hockey movie, "Slap Shot," while there are lots of great baseball movies, notably 1988's "Bull Durham," which I liked almost as much as "Bang the Drum Slowly" (the 1974 version).

"Bull Durham" was based on a minor league team in Durham, N.C., and now the real team was in the Lehigh Valley.

I also was lucky enough to be sitting between two Bethlehem men, Steve Balshi and Don Tshudy, who actually knew what was going on and were very helpful.

"Even if they lose, it's a lot of fun," said Balshi. "Look at it this way. At least they're doing better than the Phillies." (That, I think, refers to a team in Philadelphia, with which the IronPigs are affiliated.)

I have long derided baseball, a sport in which most team members, at any given moment, move at the pace of a glacier, while hockey and other "genuine" sports feature wild action and require astonishing athletic conditioning. There never could be a Babe Ruth in pro hockey. On Saturday, however, I had no boring moments.

Halfway through the second period, as players on each team were aroused from their slumber to swap places, the stadium staged a "Whack an Intern" contest in which clowns popped their heads up through holes and other clowns tried to bop them with plastic mallets.

Later, between periods, a young woman did acrobatic feats, bouncing into the air from a springy beam held by two guys. At other times, there was a juggler on stilts and a comical footrace by cartoon characters.

At first, I was dismayed to hear horrible music blasted through the sound system, just as is done at the velodrome in Trexlertown, where I had watched bicycle racing (everybody moves at the same time, except for the track stands in some sprint races) the previous evening.

When the pitcher started pitching, however, they turned off the cacophony to let people enjoy the game. The people at T-town could learn a lot from the example set by Coca-Cola Park.

As I watched the tall Durham pitcher, Matt Torra, I thought about Nuke LaLoosh from the movie. Almost on cue, after the IronPigs got something called a "double," most of the Durham players assembled on the pitcher's mound for a confab.

I knew what they were doing! They were figuring out what to get Millie for her wedding and how to deal with Torra's inability to breathe through his eyelids.

Play resumed at its languid pace and I was surprised to hear cheers when an opposing player came up to bat. Tshudy explained to me that it was Rich Thompson, who previously played for the IronPigs and was very popular. The crowd applauded again when he got a hit.

Hockey fans rarely display such sportsmanship. More often, they boo if a former player shows up on an opposing team.

The only boos I heard Saturday were when an IronPigs player failed to catch what appeared to be an easy pop-up foul ball. By this time, the Durham Bulls were ahead by three goals with time running out.

Earlier in the game, I had decided to walk all the way around a walkway circling the stadium, with plans to stop at the "Red Robin Tiki Terrace & Oasis" for a Banzai Burger. To my dismay, Red Robin offered only drinks. I nearly starved until I could get a burrito on the way home.

That brings up an important point.

When the game was over, it took me only eight minutes to go from the parking lot (filled with an attendance of 10,150) to Route 22, thanks to good access and egress roads.

That will be something to think about when 10,000 fans try to get out of downtown Allentown after an American Hockey League game at the new arena, if it ever gets built. I have an image of the traffic jam I got stuck in at Woodstock in 1969.

In any case, I hate to admit it, but Balshi was right. The ballgame was a lot of fun, and there were no fights.